Special event

Jug Week tailgate an opportunity to reconnect

Delaware County Fairgrounds, Delawre, OH

If you go

• What: Delaware County Fair, which started yesterday and runs through Saturday. The 68th
running of the Little Brown Jug will be on Thursday.

• Where: Delaware County Fairgrounds, 236 Pennsylvania Ave., Delaware

• When: Gates open at 8 a.m. and close at 9 p.m. each day.

• Admission: $6 for ages 9 or older daily except Jug Day on Thursday, when fair admission is $10
for ages 9-17 and $20 for ages 18 or older. Free admission for children age 8 or younger each day.
Reserved seating is available for the races.

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Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoJONATHAN QUILTER | DISPATCHMembers of the Delaware Amvets post gather near the harness-racing track at the Delaware County Fairgrounds. From left are Bill Slagle, LaVonna Hubbard, Steve Armstrong, Kevin Adams, Sharon Adams and John Grimm. The group sets up camp every year a week before the Little Brown Jug to have a good time.

The Delaware County Fair didn’t start until yesterday, and the Little Brown Jug, the crown jewel
of harness racing that makes the fair famous, won’t be run for another four days. Horses started
rounding the turns at the track this morning, a full week after some of these pilgrims made their
annual journey to the track.

For them, the fair and the horse racing are a means to an end: What’s really important to the
die-hards is the two-week tailgate they throw every year in the field alongside the racetrack.

“It’s like a vacation inside of Delaware,” said Delaware resident Kevin Green, 48, who has been
camping at the track for about 25 years. He laughed, and then joked, “Some of us don’t even see a
horse the whole time we’re here.”

Camping at the fairgrounds opened last Sunday, and just a handful of people showed up at
first.

Steve Armstrong, 69, got there a day later, on Monday. Armstrong lives most of the year in a
motor home at Whitesands Lake, a campground less than 3 miles from the fairgrounds. Every year for
the past six, though, he has packed up his house and driven it over to the fairgrounds, where he
spends two weeks laughing and drinking and listening to music with his friends.

On Thursday evening, Armstrong threw a cookout at his camper, grilling brats and opening bags of
shelled peanuts. Some of his Brown Jug friends are people he sees all year — guys he hangs out with
at the Fraternal Order of Eagles lodge or at the Amvets post. Others, though, are people he sees
only once a year, at the fair.

Armstrong grew up in Delaware and remembers coming to the fair with the Future Farmers of
America, helping out with barnyard animals being shown in competition.

“When you’re a kid, it’s different,” he said. “Now, this is the party place.”

Green said that’s why he keeps coming back. He gets to spend time with people he sees once a
year but counts as good friends. And he also gets to see people he grew up with in Delaware who
come home for Jug Week.

“People know everyone up here,” he said. “And if they don’t, they know someone you walked in
with, and they know you by the time you walk out.”